He kept trekking down the pebbled beach toward the waves, his feet never faltering despite the shifting stones. He wasn’t going to throw me into the sea. He was bluffing. I would freeze to death.
“Put me down.” Wiggling only had him tightening his hold. “I mean it. This isn’t funny anymore. Put me down. I’ll not go in the sea. I won’t.”
“Next time you’ll think twice about covering me in shite, now won’t you?”
As if there would be a next time. “If you put me in that water, I’ll—” A wall of icy liquid stole the words from my mouth. The thoughts from my head. The air from my lungs. Salt water burned my eyes. All I could see were bubbles rising from endless darkness.
When I finally managed to get my legs beneath me, Rían was gone. My scream of frustration was cut short when a dark head emerged an arm’s length away.
A smile tugged at Rían’s lips. Not a sneer or a smirk. A full-on, impish grin. Drops of seawater rolled down his forehead. His straight nose. His dimples. His chin.His mouth.
“There. Don’t you feel better now that you’re clean?” he taunted, splashing me in the face.
I launched myself at him before he could disappear. For some reason that I could only put down to as hypothermia-induced madness, instead of strangling him, I crushed my lips against his.
He tasted like saltwater and hysteria. Bad decisions and destiny. And magic. Sweet, intoxicating magic. Every nerve in my body came alive, buzzing with the heat of anticipation and desire. My sole focus was his mouth moving on mine. Hungry. Devouring. Devastating.
Rían’s hands slipped around my back, cupping my bottom, lifting and fitting my legs around his trim hips, pressing himself against where I ached. I gripped him as tightly as I could, so that not even a drop separated us.He lost his fingers in my tangled mass of hair, tasting and taking until my chin began to quiver and my muscles seized.
“Why is it like this with you?” I breathed.
“Stop talking,” he begged against my lips, lifting and rocking me against him, fanning the flames.
“Rían—” Was this the way humans felt when they kissed one of the creatures? The nature of magic and forbidden desire? The hysteria. The madness.
“For the love of all that is holy, shut your beautiful mouth and—” Rían dropped me so suddenly, I didn’t have time to catch my breath before slipping beneath the waves.
I came up sputtering and cursing.
“Quiet.” He caught my arm, shoving my body behind his.
My chest heaved as I gasped in unsteady breaths. His shirt clung to his lean frame the same way I had only moments ago. The way I still wanted to. Rían went as still as stone, staring toward the darkened water rising and falling along the horizon.
“What is it?” The swirling current tugged and twisted my skirts.
He didn’t spare me so much as a glance. “Merrow.”
“Merrow don’t live in our sea.” The half-human creatures with fish-like tails rumored to lure humans to their deaths lived on the pages of books, in fishermen’s lore, and off Tearmann’s coast.
Rían threw out a hand above the waves and clenched his fist. “Then what is this?” Water droplets rolled down his bare forearm to the sleeve bunched at his elbow. A haunting screech echoed toward the gray clouds as a writhing form lifted from the waves.
The thing, which was the size of a human, turned vicious, setting her bulging eyes on me, clawing at her throat with webbed fingers. Her skin was the blue of a drowned corpse, her breasts small and bare. Shimmering blue and green scales covered the tail where her legs should have been. She hissed, revealing a row of jagged black teeth.
“I’m in no mood to play today,” Rían drawled, offering the creature a sardonic smile. “Tell your friends to return to the depths, or I’ll boil the feckin’ ocean and feed you to my mother for dinner.”
He opened his hand, and the merrow fell into the waves with a splash. A moment later, at least twenty tails shimmered in the gray light, darting toward deeper water.
I began to shake, and not just from the cold. What would have happened if Rían hadn’t been here with me? Would they have tried to lure me into the depths? Would I have been able to resist their siren’s call?
The muscles in my arms and legs ached like I’d been swimming for hours. If I didn’t get out now, mythical sea monsters wouldn’t be my only problem. I twisted toward the shore, my heavy skirts making it feel like I was wading through a bog. Rían’s splashing movements sounded like they were right behind me.
“Get out of that dress before you die from the cold,” he ordered, like the idea of me dying was more of an inconvenience than a tragedy. All signs of the teasing, dimpled man I’d kissed had been washed away.
Probably for the best. Rían was hard enough to resist when he was being awful. What chance did I have if he decided to be charming?
“And wear what?” I shot back.
A dress magically appeared, stretched across the stones. I didn’t thank him; my disastrous state was his fault.